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Kenya Trip - Post 2: Early days (June 1-3)

As a team leader, I'm not supposed to choose favorites amongstthe team...but I clearly had one on this trip.

We actually had two EMI teams arriving on the same flights,
and to my knowledge, this is the first time that’s happened. Another team led
by Gary and Kevin from our office in Colorado are working at another orphanage
starting up in Western Kenya. So, in the arrival hall at Jomo Kenyatta airport
in Nairobi, we had 21 EMI’ers in all.

Fortunately for our team, the orphanage we’re working with
(‘Into Abbas Arms’) is located only about 1-1/2 hours from Nairobi, unlike the
other team’s site, which is around 7-8 hours drive from the capital. Nairobi
sits up at just over 5000 ft elevation, so it was a steady climb on the drive
out to reach our site, which is at an elevation of nearly 8800 ft.

The IAA site from above - the building next to the red markeris where the EMI team stayed during the trip.

The civil engineers walking the site. You'll notice the rain bootsand even an umbrella - not the typical Africa trip that's for sure!

As I’ve done on many projects, I’m doing the survey for this
trip. Alisha and a couple others from the team helped, as did a small group of
5 Kenyan university engineering students. One of the boys from the orphanage,
Nelson, is now at university and is studying civil engineering. We asked the
ministry to invite some local engineers to come spend time with our team, so
Nelson invited 4 friends from his college to come hang out with us for a couple
days. It was great having them with us, and it gave us a chance to talk to them
and show them what we do and also learn from them and their knowledge of local
building practices.

The crackpot survey crew - well, at least the lead surveyor wasa crackpot. The rest of the team seemed to get on well enough.

Fashioning a rod for my hand level -it's important that the equipment qualityalways matches the skill level of the surveyor.

Working with the Kenyan university students.

Not sure why I need equipment to see what Nelson apparentlysees better with his naked eyes.

I’ve probably mentioned it before, but one of the biggest
initiatives we’re pursuing at EMI is the inclusion of local engineers and
architects in the organization. We’re striving to be ‘all people serving all
people’, instead of the ‘West to the rest’ mentality so many mission
organizations (including ours, if we’re honest) have tended towards in the past.
To begin with, we’re trying to achieve a goal of 25% involvement by local
engineers/architects for all levels of engagement with EMI – volunteers,
interns and even staff – within the next 5 years. As of the beginning of 2015,
we had achieved a level of approximately 10%, organization-wide.

The students even got a crash course in photography from EMIphotographer (and spouse to Kevin, one of the co-leadersof the other EMI team in Kenya) Jenni Keiter.

Jordan in a sea of kids at the nearby school where the IAAchildren attend. The blonde woman is Jane Gravis, the Founderand Director of the IAA children's home.

Alisha became a magnet for the kids during the week, especiallyafter she started teaching every morning in the pre-school onthe IAA campus (both IAA kids and village kids alike attendthe pre-school, Monday through Friday mornings).

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We are the Crawfords - Brad, Alisha, Brodie, Jonah & Graysen. We work with Engineering Ministries International's (EMI's) office in Colorado, having previously lived and worked out of EMI's Uganda (Kampala, Uganda) and UK (Colchester, Essex) offices. This blog is a chronicle of our lives working with EMI.